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daria42 writes "Tensions between the US Government and its counterpart in Australia appear to be rising over Australia's proposal to filter the internet for objectionable content. The US government has raised its concerns over what it sees as potential censorship directly with the Australian Government. However, last night, Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy denied he had had any approach from US State Department officials."

"We can censor you but you can not censor us, we can hide info to you but you can not hide info to us." --United States of America

Probably just another CIA "Red Cell" [telegraph.co.uk] style case of manipulating public opinion similar to this case [salon.com]. Only In this example its just basic old Reverse psychology [wikipedia.org]: Your citizens overwhelmingly do not want filters. If the US says don't do it, your citizens will rally against foreigners telling them what to do - and so be more open to implement filtering. Childish, but it probably works on some.

It'd probably work better than their attempts to make and distribute porn films starring fake foreign leaders. In this case, it'd be a funny take on the filters, but I'm not sure I want to see Big Kev in action.

I've always operated under the belief that the US government uses the internet as a means (probably the most effective means since we rely so much less operatives then we have in the past) to disseminate their own "form" of democracy. The US has invested heavily in this outlet of propaganda (news, if you prefer to call it that).

Australia jeopardizes all of this by possibly starting a trend that spreads to other countries, in effect, legitimizing filtering.

I think someone in the US government finally realized that would be a HUGE step backwards in terms of what the US government wants.

To be honest, I find it highly amusing that all of this, the use of the net as a means of disseminating propaganda, might actually be the one thing that ensures net neutrality.

Australia jeopardizes all of this by possibly starting a trend that spreads to other countries, in effect, legitimizing filtering.

The problem is, EVERYONE keeps saying its impossible (which isn't a problem for those who don't want a filter).

First the ISPs joined the test-run specifically to prove the idea is infeasible.

Then Stephen Conroy kept pushing for it, so the company whose filters they were going to use stepped up and said "It won't work. Our filters are for small networks such as at a high-school. They won't work on a nation-wide scale."

A company, who the government wanted to throw money at, said "Don't give us money. We can't sell you this product because it won't do what you want it to do." They did this. PUBLICLY! That degree of honesty is just staggering and shocking. And if that company is sacrificing the chance to make so much money, the filter simply can't be done.

So no matter how much Stephen Conroy might want a filter, it won't happen unless he gets some technicians from China to help us out.

I think you misunderstand the aim of the Chinese firewall. From what people I know in China have said, it's pretty easy to bypass and a lot of tech-savvy people do. The aim is subtler. It's closer to a party-sponsored news outlet like Fox News; it isn't to stop people finding things out, it's simply to make it easier to find party-approved information than anything else. It's not there to make it impossible to find information that the party doesn't want you to see - that's impossible - it's there to ma

If it was implemented anywhere in "the west" then most citizens would find ways around it, or bypass it completely....

Until the Daily Mail "named and shamed" people bypassing the filters and sandwiched their picture between a known paedophile and Jon Venables. Then you'll find the consequences for dissent are every bit as unpleasant as those available to the Communist Party.

What most people don't realise it the the great firewall of China does not work either... it is only mostly effective because of the consequences of trying to get around it...
If it was implemented anywhere in "the west" then most citizens would find ways around it, or bypass it completely....

Forget the citizens, Australian ISP's would just not implement it. A VPN to Singapore or Sweden becomes standard part of the package, after this ISP's will just implement the filter in the cheapest way possible

The problem is that it *may* work. As in, they will turn it on, filtering 500 web sites, tell the populace that they are now safe from internet child porn and the ignorant masses will notice nothing different and vote for the government for doing the right thing.

Nobody will notice that it is completely ineffective, or that it entrenches use of secure P2P channels by pedophiles so that it becomes infinitely harder to track them down. Nobody will give the slightest thought to the fact that infrastructure

Nobody will notice that it is completely ineffective, or that it entrenches use of secure P2P channels by pedophiles so that it becomes infinitely harder to track them down.

Is that a bad thing, thought? A pedophile downloads child porn to jack off to; you track him down. Why? What, exactly speaking, does that accomplish, apart from making life even harder for someone who's already dealt a shitty hand?

I understand people want to see someone suffer - that's what the gladiator games of Rome were all about, fe

Well, you're engaging in a whole different argument about whether passive pedophilia is dangerous or not. You appear have a view about that. It doesn't really matter. Linking the argument against censorship to the notion that consumption of child sex abuse material is harmless would be horrifically destructive to the cause. It would alienate a substantial portion of people who are against censorship and validate the bizarre accusation that continually gets made that people opposing the filter are sympa

It won't ensure net neutrality. They'll just ensure (what they want to get through) gets through, and allow (what they don't want to get through) to get censored. It's not so much a problem with filtering. It's more about who decides what gets filtered.

Some cultural values are better than others, and should dominate over them. For example, free access to information is better than censorship, and should dominate over it. This can be easily demonstrated by thinking whether you would want some entity preventing you from accessing information that entity has deemed contrary to its goals.

But hey, keep on lying to yourself that all cultures are equal, and specifically that ours isn't superior to any other; ou

Some cultural values are better than others, and should dominate over them.

Yeah, like the way that respect for other people's cultures should completely dominate cultural imperialism. When I say respect, of course, I don't mean you have to agree with them, but at the same time, you don't have to shove alternatives down their throats.

You wait. If China becomes big enough, you're going to get a huge taste of your own medicine. You're going to see exactly what it's like when a bunch of powerful idiots come in

Yeah, like the way that respect for other people's cultures should completely dominate cultural imperialism. When I say respect, of course, I don't mean you have to agree with them, but at the same time, you don't have to shove alternatives down their throats.

I haven't suggested shoveling anything down anyone's throat. I have merely suggested letting the Chinese people decide for themselves, rather than Chinese Communist Party deciding for everyone and hiding alternatives to prevent any of their subjects f

I read that before I posted my comment. Then I posted my comment. Do you know why?

Because just as it's juvenile to suddenly hate things because someone else orders you to like it, it's equally juvenile to start modifying your behaviour because someone points out a resemblance to juvenile behaviour. You assume here that I didn't have similar opinions before the US government decided to poke its nose into our business, which is simply not true.

Except the US doesn't block them, you can get to those gambling sites and play them just fine within the US. Of course you might be breaking the law and will probably have problems transferring money due to those laws but that has nothing to do with internet filtering.

Sorry mate but in no way are those casinos blocked. The US Federal Government closed loopholes in transfer of funds that were used to launder money that is all.

I myself continue to legally play poker online (for money). I pay taxes on the income from that online poker. A friend of mine gambles online as his sole income. Under IRS guidelines he is running a sole proprietorship (company) and has to keep extensive records for tax purposes. He provides thousands of documents listing what he played, what

ACTA isn't being rammed down our throats, since we're taking an active part in negotiating it. Far more nefarious was 5 years ago when through the AUSFTA [wikipedia.org] we had copyright extensions from 50 to 70 years, and the DMCA rammed into Australian law without any significant debate in the Australian parliament under the banner of the greater trade good.

We the people of Australia through our elected representatives in government. If you don't like it, go speak up, or stand for parliament and make a change through the system. Most people won't care too much because they either don't know or are likely to believe it'll not affect them, unless we who understand the implications raise awareness and can argue a persuasive case.

See subject-line above, & again: Guys, IF you're going to "mod me down", have the balls to say why, & on what TECHNICAL grounds...

Then by all means pass on that sentiment to Conroy, as due process is definitely not part of the proposal.

Last time I checked, Australia was a democracy, as as such the politicians and their departments' actions should be answerable to the public and this proposed filter bypasses every method of accountability we've put in to law.

It's being pushed through for the same reason most policies are pushed through by governments -- because they think there is political capital to be gained in doing so. While I'm unsure whether their assumption is accurate, there is no way it would have come to this point without extensive focus group testing and behind-the-scenes calculations of exactly what they have to gain.

(the Liberals are the conservative party for our foreign readers... go figure).

That actually makes sense. Liberalism is a fairly conservative array of political values. It's not actually "extreme leftism" or "socialism" or any of the other things the nutty right-wingers would have you believe.

That depends on what your definition of "success" is. Successfully filtering the net completely - so that no single person is ever able to access some forbidden information even once - may well be impossible. However, filtering the net enough to be effective in manipulating the views of an entire population is entirely possible. I have met Chinese students who have been raised behind the "Great Firewall" and who had never heard of the Tiananmen Square protests until they relocated to the West. People who we

Normally I disagree with USA foreign policy, but in this case I welcome US government sticking its nose in where it's not welcome.
On behalf of all (thinking) Australians, thank you USA for standing up to our government and this facist policy.
http://stephenconroy.com.au/ [stephenconroy.com.au]

...except that they haven't done anything at all. There are just a few mumbles of 'concern' over something their voter-base is likely to disapprove of. I don't see that making a difference any-time soon.

...except that they haven't done anything at all. There are just a few mumbles of 'concern' over something their voter-base is likely to disapprove of. I don't see that making a difference any-time soon.

True... we need a larger, more official push. If we get that, then the Australian government will cave as it always does e.g. FTA (Free Trade Agreement) between the USA and Australia.

I don't think so. I think even the bare mention of this at diplomatic levels will have more effect than all the protest from the Australian public put together. Censorship is a big deal in the US right now because of Google and China and Australia going ahead with it will make it measurably more difficult for US companies in China because China will (and already has) cited Australia as an example to defend their policy.

...how both so-called "free" countries will crack down upon China for filtering the internet on what they claim to be important free-speech-issues, but in the same time will not hesitate to implement rather identical measures at home.

The US has no nationwide government filtering of any kind, period. There is nothing available on the internet that I can't get to.

All government sponsored internet filtering there is exists at the state and local level, and only within schools and libraries (it's always "for the children"). Even some of that is getting pushed back, libraries in particular.

This news isn't on the scale of Google redirecting mainland Chinese search results to Google.cn but has more in common than Senator Conroy here in Australia would like people to think. Wait, no, that isn't even right, he's openly compared [rubenerd.com] the proposed Great Firewall of Australia to the filters in China.

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Federal Labor won the last election and Barack Obama and the Democrats won the elections in the US, Australian newspapers reported their first meetings as being one with kindred spirits, in much of the same way as George Bush and John Howard. This filter is perhaps the first large(ish) crack in this relationship, and I'm really hoping the Americans kick up as much of a fuss about Australia's laws as China's if the filter in Australia goes through.

The problem for the voting public here is in our version of the two party system, the opposition are considered the more conservative party, and its new Christian far-right leader Tony Abbott has been fairly silent on the whole issue. One can imagine he supports it in spirit but doesn't want to seem as though he's agreeing with Labor. Either way, we're royally stuffed.

In the meantime if you're an Aussie, don't forget the Electronic Frontiers Australia is accepting donations [efa.org.au] for their Open Internet campaign.

I lived in France for 20 years, also a supporter of this, I wish we did in UK. In France, it meant that the continuous diet of brainless, braindead violent programmes and 'rich people behaving nauseously' (Beverly Hills xxxxxx) were present, but in limited quantity, There were and are a lot of local cops shows, Julie Lescaut, for example, more connected with the indigenous culture.

Finally, I have family in the West Indies and when the island switched from BBC to US channels (anecdotally, but many people said it) violence increased.

I know I'll get a lot of hate for posting this, but there is a category of cultural toxic waste and it does modify behaviour, however much we wish it didn't.

I followed your homepage link and I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff there. Previous trials of filtering in Australia have resulted in totally innocuous pages being filtered. The reasons for this always come back to incompetence on the part of the people maintaining the filter.

The open ended filter my government proposes can never be guaranteed to filter only illegal content because there is no adequate peer review. When you propose a filtering system you should think how it could go wrong. Some

I agree, the actual proposal is ridiculous (although we run Dan's Guardian in a drop-in to protect kids using it, makes us hypocrites...) but I'm thinking about the philosophy behind it.

My ideal is that every citizen has a level of education and ethical-compass where they can do all this 'work' themselves. But, actually, I have seen standards going down in the UK, not old-person grumpiness, I really wish they hadn't.,,

As standards decline there's less protection at individual level against 'trash'.

Against all my instincts, I find myself for the right of governments to filter, as long as they are 'legitimate' governments.

The issue is that while you might be quite happy for a legitimate government to filter, they can quickly become an illegitimate government, perhaps especially because they control the filters and will filter any evidence of their illegitimacy from the public at large.

The biggest issue governments have is that there's no heirarchy to the internet - they can't speak to the owner of the internet like they could with newspapers or TV networks or radio networks - and that lack of a single point, or even a limited set of points of control freaks most governments out. Spin is awful hard to get out there when you need to spin hundreds instead of a handful.

The road to hell^W censorship is paved with good intentions. If people, even a minority, want to see US shows, who the hell are you to decide if they should or not?Give people access to all shows, and let them decide.

there is a category of cultural toxic waste and it does modify behaviour, however much we wish it didn't.

Yes, it turns people into being less chauvinistic, perhaps.

Not that I care personally: I get all my content from the interwebs. But I oppose your "benevolent censorship" as a principle. WIth

Senator Conroy has conceded that greater transparency is needed in terms of how content ends up on the blacklist, but last night he again refused to make the blacklist itself public, saying it would provide people instant access to the banned material.

Okay Stephen here is how it works: every time an Australian hits the black list they post the URL on a wiki somewhere so if anybody needs some porn or the libaral party website or whatever they just follow the link from there and access it through a russian VPN? Simple? Okay.

You can do even better than that. I've reported the ACMA web site to ACMA because it contains a dangerous conspiracy to overthrow democracy in Australia by restricting free speech. The actually even processed the request and sent me a response. I think reporting their web site to themselves is a good way to protest. If we can get it reported some thousands of times by separate individuals then we can start to ask why this web site is still legal when it is offensive to thousands of Australians. Go do

I really hope that the US put a lot of pressure on our Australian government to try and prevent this draconian Mandatory Internet Censorship. If it goes ahead in Australia, it will pave the way for many more developed Western countries. This is a serious attack on our freedom.
There's not much left we can do at the moment - the internet community is kicking up a fuss, most polls & votes are >94% AGAINST the censorship, the US gov, google, local telcos, ISP's and all the technical experts are advising AGAINST it, but ignorant Senator Conroy and the government keep pushing ahead to censor the internet. If it goes ahead it will be bad news for everyone. The more people that support us on this VERY important issue, the better. Slashdot + its community probably have the potential to help make a difference.
Please USA, and the entire international online community, show your support on this in any way you can!

The Sydney Morning Herald had an informal web poll today with 3 choices: In Favour of filtering, Against filtering, Indifferent. Last I looked at it 96% had voted against! That's overwhelming. You usually get lots of indifferent here. How this sad man Stephen Conroy can claim to be a representative of the people is beyond me. He is clearly acting against their interests and against their wishes. He's one of few politicians here that's gotten public death threats (not that I could ever condone something as stupid as a death threat). Since he would seek to push ahead despite this he should be sacked. I have no idea if there's a legal provision for it in the Australian constitution (and I doubt there is) but there ought to be.

Since he would seek to push ahead despite this he should be sacked. I have no idea if there's a legal provision for it in the Australian constitution (and I doubt there is) but there ought to be.

I don't know if you are an Aussie but it seems to me that the Government is being pushed in this direction by the owners of media companies. This could be because of thoughts like "the internet competes with TV so it should have the same ratings system" or "first we block child porn, then those torrents of Neighbours and Blue Heelers" or "more people would watch A Current Affair if they weren't browsing 4chan one handed".

In any event it is doomed to failure and I am reminded of a science museum years ago which set up a termian (VT220 or similar) for kids to play on. It accumulated a lot of rude words so somebody wrote a black list but there had to be a command to print the black list out and some young geek found the key combination...

"more people would watch A Current Affair if they weren't browsing 4chan one handed"

You mixed that up with 'Today Tonight' viewers... ACA viewers would be protesting the existence of 4chan, while 'Media Watch' viewers would be outraged by the trailers for TT, without even seeing the episode...

How this sad man Stephen Conroy can claim to be a representative of the people is beyond me. He is clearly acting against their interests and against their wishes.

Here [abc.net.au] is a more in-depth survey telephone survey commissioned by the ABC [abc.net.au]. According to it, 92% are in favour of some form of ISP-based filtering, which lends at least some credence to Conroy's claim. But that's about where the consensus ends, 70% have concerns that the filter will be used to block free speech and 90% are against a secret blacklist.

"Hi folks, here's the poll! If you are for the filtering of indecent images of children and violent sexual acts, dial this number! If you believe that everyone should have access to indecent images of children and violent sexual acts, dial the second number."

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Filtering does not solve the problem of child abuse: It just takes it out of the public eye.

The problem is that web site polls are massively biased towards tech savvy people who understand what a load of rubbish this idea is. When they do more general polls they come up with 70% in favor. I really hope that it starts to change as people understand more of the details of the filter policy and just how bad it is (it's not just generically bad - it's bad even amongst censorship policies. Even people in favor of internet censorship should oppose this particular version of it).

I have no idea if there's a legal provision for it in the Australian constitution (and I doubt there is) but there ought to be.

There won't be. The Australian constitution doesn't have a bill of rights like the US does. There are some acts (e.g. the Victorian Charter of Human Rights) but they're more like guidelines then rules.

I don't want censorship at all. But I think it's hilarious that America, which is so censored that it can't even show boobies on television (nipples, specifically), is telling Australia that it shouldn't be censoring things.

There was an article posted only a couple of days ago that essentially said censorship is harmful to democracy [slashdot.org]. Maybe both the US and Australian governments should get out of censorship altogether, lest they wind up like China.

This sort of thing has come up before. Broadcasters can be punished after the fact, but they cannot be prevented from broadcasting anything. To avoid indecency fines, the broadcasters self censor.

It's similar, but it actually puts the government in a pretty weak position, as they cannot prevent anything if the broadcasters are willing to take the fine. What really stops them is that people in America don't want that sort of thing on a regular basis, else it would be worth it for broadcasters t

Sure thing, time delays on live events weren't in any way government imposed.

The broadcasters censored themselves by implementing longer time delays without government influence, because the lack of such time delays cost them a hell of a lot of money in indecency fines.

That's the closest thing we have to censorship - our indecency laws. They are the same laws that make it illegal to run around flashing everybody. You can argue against those if you like, but broadcasters are held accountable for the conten

We might not be able to watch nips on broadcast TV, but at least we can watch small breasted Asian midget pr0n on the Intertubes while playing a nice and gory round and Aliens vs Predators. Not that I want either, but I would take the US governments regulating three crappy broadcast channels from showing nips over a universal internet filter and a fucking censor board on video games. Wait until someone realizes that books have violence in Australia. OMFGTHECHILDREN!

A new entry in Slashdot (a mere six hours later) shows that "The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 passed a Senate panel giving the president unprecedented power to issue a nation-wide blackout or restriction on websites without congressional approval."

I'm all for the US Government bringing the matter up with our government. It sounds like this was done respectfully and informally, which is the right way to go when you have one mature democracy dealing with another. They aren't making demands or threats or anything... just voicing some concern. An added pressure on Conroy to drop the idea, hopefully. Anti-Americanism is rampant in Australia these days but I hope people can still see that, for its flaws, the US still acts as a positive force in areas such

Well, whirlpool.net.au fits the bill quite well already, although its scope is not as wide as Slashdot. I read and post on both. The point of the internet is to create global discussion, not partition everyone off into their own country.

What? People who have one opinion should argue a different opinion because you say so?

Some people are morally opposed to censorship in all forms. A lot of people, however, are not. If it were possible to produce a filter that blocked 100% of child pornography and nothing else, then they would be in favour of it. The fact is that such a filter is not possible.

Aha! So I see that you're in favor of sweeping the problem under the carpet? If online-trading-or-swapping-of-child-pornography is *such* a major problem to society (and I would argue that it is), WHY is the minister FORCING the entire country to pretend it simply does not happen?

but what about all the other porn & violence our kids should not be looking at on the 'net?

First of all, as a parent, it is my responsibility to make the decisions about what my kids should and shouldn't have access to. It's not their responsibility to decide what is best for my family, and it certainly not yours. If I want to censor my kids' internet experience, I can buy net nanny software and select the categories and sites that I decide are important. Also, the more you tell someone that they can't have something the more they want it, especially with kids. If you try and block access to por